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(Alliance News) - Shares UK Oil & Gas PLC were down over 30% on Friday, after the company announced that it will abandon testing of a Turkish asset.
UKOG is a London-based exploration and production company, which focuses on projects in the UK and Turkey. Shares in the company were down 32% at 0.012 pence each in London on Friday afternoon.
UKOG said that no further testing would take place at its Pinarova-1 site in southeastern Turkey. The company holds a 50% non-operating interest in Pinarova and the surrounding 305 square kilometre Resan licence.
In January, UKOG's operating partner Aladdin Middle East Ltd, a Turkey-focused oil and gas exploration company, began swab testing at the site. Despite "extensive" testing, the site has failed to reveal commercial rates of hydrocarbons.
However, UKOG said that drilling and testing at Pinarova may have penetrated a small oil accumulation within the Germik-Hoya sequence. The company intends to explore the commercial potential of these future targets.
Chief Executive Officer Stephen Sanderson said: "Exploration drilling and testing is never guaranteed to deliver success, even if all prior indicators are positive. This is certainly the case for Pinarova-1, and we are disappointed by the lack of commercial flow. We will continue to analyse all data and explore both the potential updip shallow Germik-Hoya accumulation and the likely more significant deeper pool objective, the most probable source of the observed shallow hydrocarbons and shot-hole oil seep. With operator Aladdin's cooperation, costs were fortunately kept to a minimum and it adds to our bank of data about the Resan licence for the future."
By Hugh Cameron, Alliance News reporter
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